Five Winters(49)

We worked together companionably for an hour or so, talking about this and that, our conversation occasionally dwindling into a relaxed silence, the way it can when you’re with those you’re closest to. A tame robin made us smile when it hopped onto the garden fence, completely undaunted by our presence. And when we heard the tinkling music of an ice-cream van driving down the road, we both laughed out loud.

“He’s hopeful in December,” Sylvia said, laughing.

“Mark and Rosie would have been up for it,” I said, and she laughed again.

“They would. You, not so much. They always had a sweeter tooth than you.”

I pictured the three of us on hot summer days—seated in a line on Sylvia and Richard’s front garden wall, Rosie and Mark finishing their ice creams in record time and me making mine last until it dripped down my arm.

“What was I like after Mum and Dad died?” I asked, my thoughts drifting back to the little boy in the case study and forward to my first social worker home visit, due to take place on Tuesday evening.

Sylvia straightened, pushing her blonde hair back from her face, leaving a smudge of dirt on her cheek. “Oh, darling, you were lost. A little lost soul. You’d be playing with Rosie one minute, all smiles, laughing about something together—you remember how you two used to get the giggles? You only had to look at each other, and you’d be off. But after your parents died, you’d suddenly go all quiet and creep up on the sofa next to me for a cuddle. You never wanted to speak about it. You just needed a cuddle. We did a lot of baking together, remember?”

“Chocolate muffins.”

“Chocolate muffins, ginger biscuits, cheese straws . . . Richard used to say he had his own private baker’s shop right in his own home.”

We shared a smile. I remembered those days, Sylvia letting me scrape out the mixing bowl. Chocolate all around my face, a measure of comfort in my heart from the deliciousness of the smells in the kitchen and the magic of having created something so wonderful from such unpromising ingredients.

“Yum!” Richard would exclaim when he came into the kitchen, making me laugh when he closed his eyes in exaggerated rapture.

“How are you doing now?” I asked Sylvia, drawing her in for a hug.

“Oh, you know, jogging along,” she said, hugging me back. “Sometimes I’m just like you were back then—I get absorbed in whatever I’m doing and think to myself, That’ll make Richard howl when I tell him, and then I have to remember he’s gone all over again.”

“I know,” I said. “I do that too.”

We gave each other a final squeeze and got on with our weeding.

Sylvia sighed. “I do worry about Mark, you know. Rosie’s okay, I think. Have you seen her lately?”

“We’re meeting up on Monday night to go and see the Christmas lights.”

“Oh, that’s nice. Anyway, as I say, she’s all right, I think. She’s been letting her grief out. But I get the feeling Mark’s been bottling his up, what with getting his business up and running.”

“How’s that going, d’you know?”

“I’m not sure. He and Grace aren’t likely to tell me if anything’s wrong, are they? Wouldn’t want to worry me. And he has got Grace to talk to. The thing is, he’d probably have spoken to his father, too, if he’d been here, what with Richard being self-employed for most of his career.” She sighed. “I don’t know, love. I’m probably worrying for nothing. You do when you’re a mum. You’ll find that out yourself soon enough.”

“I guess I will.”

“I think it’s a wonderful thing you’re doing.”

“Do you? Not crazy?”

“Not at all. I think it will be hard, yes, but really worthwhile. I’ll give you all the support I possibly can.”

“You always have.”

“Oh, darling, how could I not? We always loved you, Richard and me. And Tilda . . . She meant well, bless her, but well, let’s just say she was sometimes out of her depth.”

“Was I that bad?”

“Of course not. You were grieving, that’s all. You just needed a haven. It’ll be the same for any child you adopt. That’s what they’ll need too.”

“That’s what you still are to me, you know, a haven. Richard was too.”

“Yes, I know he was. Bless him. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since he went, I really can’t.”

I thought about the cruise Sylvia was going on over the holiday period. “Where will the ship be on the actual anniversary?”

Sylvia dug her garden fork hard into the soil so it stood up by itself, and then she reached for her secateurs to start cutting the ivy back. “We’ll be in Bridgetown, Barbados. It’s a day’s stopover. I shall do a bit of shopping—you know how bored Richard always got when I dragged him round any shops—and then I’m going to go on a trip to Harrison’s Cave. Richard would have liked that, wouldn’t he? It’s got lots of stalagmites and stalactites.”

I smiled. “I can hear him talking about it,” I said, “explaining which is which. The ’mites go up, and the ’tites come down.”

Sylvia laughed. “Yes, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Anyway, yes, so I’m going to do that—something for me, and something for him, just as we would have done if he were still here.”